Microsoft Office Suite Office 95 (7.0)

1995, August 24

Microsoft Office 95 (version 7.0) is the fourth major release of the Microsoft Office office suite for Windows systems, released by Microsoft on August 24, 1995. It is the successor to both Office 4.2 and 4.3 and it bumps up the version number of both the suite itself and all its components to 7.0, so that each Office program's number matches the rest. The suite is officially compatible with Windows NT 3.51 through Windows 2000. It was superseded by Microsoft Office 97 and support ended on December 31, 2001. It is the last version of Microsoft Office to support Windows NT 3.51 RTM–SP4.

Features

Microsoft Office 95 includes six applications: Word (a word processor), Excel (a spreadsheet editor), PowerPoint (a presentation program), Access (a database management system), Schedule+ (a time management app) and Binder (a program for binding the work of the mentioned apps together). The CD-ROM version includes Microsoft Bookshelf.

Previously, Microsoft had released Office 4.2 for Windows NT for several architectures, which included 32‑bit Word 6.0 for Windows NT and Excel 5.0 for Windows NT, but PowerPoint 4.0 and the Office Manager were 16‑bit. With Office 95, all components in the suite were 32-bit. All the Office 95 programs are OLE 2-enabled, meaning that they allow interoperability between themselves and other applications that support the protocol. Binder uses this protocol to bind OLE objects together.

Office 95 moves the version number of its applications to 7.0 to match Word's version number. Other components bear the same version numbers to show that they are contemporaries, although their predecessors are not version 6.0. The previous versions of components are Word 6.0, Excel 5.0, PowerPoint 4.0, Schedule+ 1.0 and Access 2.0. Binder had no predecessor at the time.

The Office 95 programs utilize a two-tone gradient in the title bar at the top of the window, gradually turning from black at the left side to dark blue at the right. At the time, this was unique to Office 95; no other program running under Windows 95 or Windows NT utilized gradient title bars. This feature was eventually incorporated into the shell of Windows 98 and later, which would allow customizable gradient colors and extend the feature to include dialog boxes as well.

Microsoft Excel contains an Easter egg, a hidden Doom–like game called Hall of Tortured Souls crediting the application's writers.

Contemporaneous components

Additional programs have been marketed as "compatible with Microsoft Office 95":

Microsoft Project (Version 4.1a)

Microsoft Publisher (Version 3.0)

Microsoft FrontPage 1.1

Office Small Business Pack

Small Business Financial Manager for Excel

Other contemporaneous Microsoft products include:

Microsoft Works 4.0

Microsoft Money 4.0